Motor Racing And Gallery Motor

A classic from today's Daily Telegraph.

Renationalised railways:

SIR – With the acquisition of Arriva (report, April 22) by Deutsche Bahn, which already owns or runs EWS (operator of the royal train), London Overground, Tyneside Metro, Wrexham & Shropshire and Chiltern Rail, it seems those that wish to see our trains returned to state ownership can start to celebrate.
I would personally have preferred it had the state in question been Britain, but perhaps we can at least look forward to improved efficiency on Arriva services.
John Vance
Kingsdown, Kent

0 comments

This column of mine appears in the Morning Star.

"Is there any point to which you would wish to draw my attention?"
"To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time."
"The dog did nothing in the night-time."
"That was the curious incident," remarked Sherlock Holmes.

Rather like the non-barking dog in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's classic detective story Silver Blaze, the most curious incident regarding our three main parties manifesto promises on Britain's railways is not what they have said, but what they haven't said.

The Labour Party boasts of its commitment to "a new high-speed rail line linking North and South" and says it will "press ahead with a major investment programme in existing rail services." Labour will "encourage more people to switch to rail" and promises to "treble the number of secure cycle storage spaces at rail stations."

The Tories pledge to "reform our railways to provide a better focus on tackling problems that matter most to passengers, like overcrowding." They will "grant longer, more flexible franchises to incentivise private sector investment in improvements like longer trains and better stations."

The Lib Dems, meanwhile, promise a "rail renaissance, reopening closed railway lines and new stations and building a high-speed network to cut journey times to Scotland and the north of England."

Have you spotted something? Not one of our three major parties mentions the single most important measure that would improve our fragmented, unreliable and ludicrously expensive railway network - taking the entire network back into public ownership.

Seeing that over 70 per cent of the public want to bring back British Rail, you would have thought that at least one of our three leading parties would advocate such a measure.

But in the same way that the non-barking dog revealed to Sherlock Holmes the solution to the mystery of Silver Blaze, so the parties' reluctance to even discuss renationalisation reveals to us the sordid truth about British "democracy." Namely, that it isn't the people who decide what gets into party manifestos, but capital.

LET'S LOOK TO AUSTRIA

The difference between how a publicly owned transport system and a privately owned one operates was graphically illustrated to my family and I on a recent journey back from Austria.

We were staying for a few days in a little town in the Alps. We took a train from the town to Salzburg's main railway station. The journey lasted two-and-three-quarter hours and cost just over 9 euros (£7.90) each. The train had plenty of free seats and we had legroom which seemed to be almost double the size of that we get on trains back home in Britain.

We then took a bus from Salzburg railway station to Salzburg airport, a 20-minute ride which cost 2 euros (£1.75) each. The train was punctual to the second, as was the bus.

Indeed, in all my journeys in Austria down the years I have never known a train or bus to be late, despite them sometimes having to deal with atrocious winter weather conditions.

How different to the way transport operates in privatised Britain.

On arriving back at our British airport, we were informed that the National Express coach to take us home would not be arriving as it had broken down. We, along with the other passengers, had to wait another 25 minutes before another coach, picked us up to take us to Luton airport, from where we had to change to get on yet another coach.

Almost every time I or a family member travels with National Express, something likes this happens. How is that Austria's State Railways and the country's Postbuses can operate so efficiently, while National Express is so dreadful?

Neoliberals love to claim that anything run by the state is inefficient and anything privately run is efficient. In fact very often the opposite is true.

What makes the National Express travel experience even more galling is the knowledge that the company has received around £2.5bn in taxpayers' subsidies over the past 10 years - and it pays us back with such an appalling service.

As RMT general secretary Bob Crow says, National Express has been taking us all for a ride - though not a very punctual or comfortable one.

Things could get even worse. Thatcherite fanatics in the EU Commission seem hell-bent on destroying Europe's excellent public transport and in the name of "increasing competition" force through, against the public's wishes, the privatisation of railway and bus services.

The prospect of rip-off, inefficient British companies like National Express running trains and buses in Austria at some time in the future is a truly appalling one. It falls to us to build a pan-European pro-public ownership movement to make sure it never happens.

TARGETTING HUNGARIAN RAILWAYS

Hungary's state-owned railway MAV has had a tough time of it in the past few years. Starved of investment by the country's faux-left, ultra-Blairite government, around 10 per cent of lines have been closed and ticket prices have risen sharply. But despite the very welcome defeat of Hungary's corrupt, serial-privatising and pro-war "Socialists" at the weekend, worse could be to come not just for MAV but for Hungary's long-suffering people.

Ninety-three heirs of Hungarian Holocaust survivors have filed a lawsuit at a Chicago court against MAV for $240 million damages and $1 billion non-asset compensation.

They claim that MAV had provided its carriages being fully aware that these would be used to transport 437,000 Jews to the gas chambers in Auschwitz in 1944 and accused the company of looting their ancestors' possessions. The case is due to be heard on April 22.

The Holocaust was an unspeakably heinous crime, but is it right that in 2010 Hungary's railways should be held responsible for the atrocities of Hungary's pro-nazi collaborationist government nearly 70 years ago?

If the lawsuit succeeds it will not only mean the end of MAV and job losses for its 20,000 employees, but, as the railway is in public hands, even more hardship for ordinary Hungarians, who are reeling after years of cutbacks in health care, pensions and welfare provision.

With poverty and malnutrition rising in Hungary, the cuts in public spending which would follow the success of the lawsuit would inevitably lead to the premature deaths of innocent people who had nothing whatsoever to do with the horrible events of World War II.

It's good to hear that Jewish community leader Peter Feldmajer has criticised the lawsuit, saying: "No legal action can be brought against MAV on moral grounds."

Even if it does win the case, cash-strapped MAV has resigned itself to spending up to 45m forints (around £150,000) on legal fees to defend itself against the lawsuit.

Hopefully common sense will prevail and, instead of facing closure or more cutbacks, Hungary's state railway will win the case and get a better deal from the country's new leadership.

0 comments

This column of mine appears in The Morning Star. It’s also cross-posted at the Campaign For Public Ownership website.

The NHS is a great example of socialism in action. Public libraries are another. The idea of a place where all members of the community can go to borrow books which are communally owned is a quite wonderful one and totally at odds with neoliberal ideology, which prefers private - and not public - provision.

This is probably why, in this age of neoliberalism, public libraries in Britain are under grave threat. 

A new report by the Valuation Office Agency showed that Britain has lost nearly 200 public libraries since 1997.

The number of books available to be borrowed has fallen dramatically - by 13 million in the period 2003-9. And worse could be to come, with swingeing cutbacks in local government spending likely to reduce the library service still further.

Part of the problem with the decline in libraries is that a new generation of people, brought up in an age obsessed with private ownership, prefer to buy books from bookshops rather than borrow them free of charge from their local library.

In 1979, by contrast, two-and-a-half times as many books were loaned by libraries than were bought at bookshops.

It's revealing that older people - brought up in a more collectivist era - use public libraries much more than younger Britons whose formative years were in an acquisitive society where private ownership became our country's new religion.

To reverse the decline in public libraries, therefore, we don't just have to increase spending on them. We need to change the whole ethos of our society to one where people once again relish sharing communally owned goods.





Hoping for change in Germany


One of the most disappointing political events of the last year in western Europe was the return to government in Germany, after an 11-year absence, of the fanatically pro-big business Free Democratic Party (FDP).


The FDP, a partner in the current Christian Democrat (CDU)-led coalition, favours massive cuts in public spending, cuts in the top rate of income tax and further privatisation.


The new German government has stated its intention to proceed with a partial privatisation of the country's state-owned railway Deutsche Bahn.


But the good news is that the plan has met opposition from within the government itself.


Transport Minister Peter Ramsauer - a member of the Christian Social Union party, the Bavarian sister party of Angela Merkel's CDU - said he was not prepared to "squander economic assets" and blamed privatisation plans for the deterioration in services on the Deutsche Bahn-owned S-Bahn in Berlin.


The battle going on within the German government is one between fanatical neoliberals - the FDP - and the more moderate conservative protectors of the Rhineland model.


Let's hope the latter, with help from unions and the German left, can defeat the former and keep Germany's excellent publicly owned railway on track. And let's hope too that the stay in government of the extremist FDP is extremely short-lived.






Tackling the real problem in the NHS


The script is a familiar one. Before a state-owned enterprise is privatised, it is necessary to convince the public that the enterprise in question is failing to deliver the goods and is in urgent need of "reform."


That's what happened in the 1990s with British Rail. And it's what's happening today with the NHS.


Anti-NHS propagandists have made great capital out of a recent report on the failures at Stafford hospital, where at least 400 patients were held to have died due to substandard conditions and care in the period between 2005-8.


But as Unite's national officer for health David Fleming has pointed out, Stafford's problems were not caused by public ownership but by the obsession with what he describes as the "target-obsessed privatisation culture."


Stafford hospital was run by the Mid-Staffordshire Foundation Trust. The Department of Health claims that foundation trusts are "at the cutting edge of the government's commitment to the decentralisation of public services" - which is neoliberal-speak for "they are a great back-door way to achieve privatisation of the NHS."


With their commercialised, profit-obsessed approach - and their £180k chief executives - foundation trusts are inimical to the very ethos of Nye Bevan's NHS.


Last month it was revealed that Royal Surrey County NHS Foundation Trust made a profit of over £300,000 in one year by selling abroad £4m of drugs intended for use in Britain.


The best way to make sure that the deaths at Stafford are not repeated is to scrap foundation trusts and restore the NHS to its original, 1940s socialist ideals, where the needs of patients are put before profits. And that also means bringing all ancillary services, such as cleaning and catering, back in-house.






End the annual energy profits charade


It's become an annual event. Britain's privatised energy companies announce enormous profits having failed to pass on the reduced price of gas to consumers.


Cue harsh criticism from Ofgem and expressions of shock and outrage from politicians and media commentators.


Meanwhile things carry on as before, with the privatised companies continuing to fleece the public.


The one thing that will put an end to this annual charade is the measure that none of our three major parties, still wedded to Thatcherite dogma, will even contemplate - the renationalisation of Britain's entire energy sector.


Public limited companies will always put the interests of shareholders before the interests of the general public. If we want the interests of the public to come before profits, we must have public ownership. It really is as simple as that.

0 comments

This article of mine appears in the New Statesman.

Twenty years ago, Hungary's decision to open its border with Austria triggered the dramatic events that led to the fall of communism in eastern Europe. But today the country is fighting the neoliberal economic model imposed after 1989.

In Pécs, a historic city in the south, the local authority has reacted to public anger over soaring water bills by sending security guards to seize the local waterworks from the French company Suez Environment and to prevent its management from entering the building.

A 48.05 per cent stake in the city's water company was sold to the French multinational, which supplies water to 76 million people worldwide, in 1995. The company also receives an annual "management fee" of 120 million forint (£419,000).
The mayor of Pécs, Zsolt Páva, has accused Suez of profiteering and a lack of transparency, and the town cancelled the contract with effect from the end of September. Suez is countering with legal proceedings. "If 20 commandos arrive at 3am and occupy somewhere, that is not a European solution, and is undoubtedly illegal," a company manager said.

But Suez, whose turnover last year was €12.4bn (£11.5bn), should not expect much sympathy from local people, struggling to make ends meet in an economy where real wages are forecast to fall by up to 3.5 per cent this year. In a poll, 94 per cent said they supported the local authority.

It's not the first time the French company's record has been challenged. The pressure group Food and Water Watch charges Suez with a "range of abusive practices that place profit before the human right to water", including refusing to extend services to poorer areas, cutting off water if people are unable to pay, and "raising rates to unaffordable levels".

Opposition to privatisation is high, so, with a spring election looming, even neoliberal politicians are having to change their tune: in June, Prime Minister Gordon Bajnai said he would prevent privatisation of the water supply.

Multinationals may not like it, but 20 years on from capital's conquest of eastern Europe, public ownership, not privatisation, is the vote-winner.

0 comments

When Tony Benn recently declared Sir Winston Churchill to be ‘well to the left of New Labour’, he was rounded on by the media Benn-bashers.
But once again, it's Tony who's right and not his detractors.

Yesterday a Labour government- yes a Labour government, announced its plan to privatise the Tote. The Tote, which had been set up in 1928 as a publicly-owned body by none other than Winston Churchill.

Labour want to sell a publicly owned asset that was set up by Winston Churchill and the Tories and which even survived the pro-privatisation Thatcher and Major Conservative adminstrations.

It beggars belief how anyone who considers themselves on the left, or on the 'progressive' side in British politics could even consider voting for today's Labour Party. The fact is, if Sir Winston Churchill returned to life today, he would find that his views on public ownership of the Tote would put him to the left of all our three major parties.
Doesn't that tell you something about the desperate state of British democracy?

Below is my 2006 Guardian article on Winston Churchill's 'Nanny Goat', and why selling it would be such a terrible idea.

Considering his other political achievements, it is understandable that setting up the Tote - or Horserace Totalisator Board - in 1928, only features as a minor footnote in the extraordinary career of Winston Churchill. But for lovers of racing, the impact of Churchill's creation has been immense.

For 78 years, the "nanny goat" has enjoyed a monopoly of horse-race pool betting in exchange for a guarantee that its profits are ploughed back into the sport. The arrangement has helped make British racing what it is today - a compelling, richly varied pageant which enhances the lives of millions of people.

But now racing's beneficial relationship with the Tote is under threat. The government is hellbent on privatising Churchill's creation in a move which has caused consternation throughout the racing world. Despite the opposition of the late Robin Cook, one of the few politicians in Westminster to understand horseracing and the role the Tote plays within it, in 1999 the government announced a "review" of the options for the future of the Tote. The outcome was a 2001 manifesto commitment (repeated in 2005) to sell the Tote to a Racing Trust "to allow it to compete commercially" - a favourite catchphrase of the pro-privatisation lobby which we have heard ad nauseam in relation to the planned sell-off of the Royal Mail.

To placate critics of privatisation, the government made it clear that they would not countenance a sale to another big bookmaker. But when racing, in the shape of a consortium of Arena Leisure, the Racecourse Holdings Trust and an owners group did come up with a bid, they were told that their offer was far less than the official £400m-plus valuation and that a sale at a "knockdown price" of £310m would contravene EU state aid rules.

The government has subsequently backtracked on its commitment to keep the Tote in racing, saying recently that its aim in the sale is "to achieve value for money for the taxpayer, while recognising the racing sector's legitimate interest in the Tote by ensuring that racing benefits from the sale". In reality, racing will benefit very little, regardless of what cosmetic measures the government put in place when the sell-off goes through. The Tote made a £10.7m contribution to racing last year, and the absence of shareholders means that the Tote's post-tax profits (which last year were £6.5m) remain in the sport as well. Contrast this with Ladbrokes, Britain's largest retail bookmaker, whose profits from racing have, until recently, helped its parent company Hilton embark on an ambitious programme of hotel acquisitions.

None of the arguments regularly put forward by supporters of privatisation apply. A Tote sell-off to one of its rivals will not increase competition - it will do exactly the opposite, leaving millions of punters with much less choice than before. The Tote is no inefficient loss-making enterprise, on the contrary it is inherently profitable and, in its 78 years of existence, it has never taken a penny from the government in subsidy.

Why then, when virtually everyone in racing was happy with the status quo has the government been so determined to privatise? The boosting of Treasury coffers to the tune of £400m is of course a factor, but the real reason for the sell-off is, I believe, ideological.

The privatisation of the Tote demonstrates just how wedded to neoliberal dogma New Labour is. When a Labour government tries to sell off an institution that was set up by the Tory government of Stanley Baldwin - and which escaped even the attentions of the serial privatising Margaret Thatcher - you realise how far down the road to market fundamentalism we have travelled.

0 comments

video: Prodigy Channel.

In Britain in our wonderful democracy, we have three main parties, all with different names, but all the support the same pro-capital, pro-privatisation, pro-cuts agenda.
Today Labour will announce a fire-sale of state assets- the biggest privatisation programme since the early 1980s. And what do the opposition parties say?:

Vince Cable, the Lib Dem Treasury spokesman, cautiously welcomed the move to sell off assets.....
Last night the Tories said the move was "probably necessary" given the state of the finances. A spokesman said: "Given the state the country is in it is probably necessary....

Does anyone still doubt the view that we live, to what all extents and purposes is a one-party state?

(More on the fire-sale over at the CPO)

UPDATE: The Daily Mail reports:

The pound fell to its lowest level in six months last night on news of Gordon Brown's £16billion asset sale to ease the growing national debt.
Sterling plunged after the Prime Minister announced the plan to sell central and local government assets over the next two years.

Nice one, Gordon. You're such a financial genius.

0 comments

Today would have been the 85th birthday of one of my British political heroes: the late Labour MP Peter Shore.

I corresponded with Shore when I was working abroad, teaching Economics in the early-mid 1990s. He sent me copies of the debates on the Maastricht Treaty from Hansard and then, most kindly, a copy of his book 'Leading the Left'. I was not a constituent of Shore's- yet still he replied to my requests- and could not have been more helpful.

I don’t agree with all the policy stances he took later on his life, but certainly agreed with his line on the EEC/EU and on economic policy- and in particular his views on the importance of public ownership. Shore always maintained that it was dishonest to talk about achieving greater equality without also extending public ownership. I used to be a member of the Labour Party, but left when Blair ditched Clause Four. For me, Clause Four is the very definition of socialism.
Once Labour ditched it, it could no longer have any claims to be a socialist party.

Peter Shore could have become Labour leader had he not been such a man of principle. In 1980, he seemed a strong candidate to take over from Jim Callaghan, but
his opposition to unilateral nuclear disarmament meant that many on the left preferred to support Michael Foot in the contest with Denis Healey. Had Foot not been persuaded to stand, Shore would very likely have won, but it was not to be.

Shore was simply too left-wing for the right-wing of the party (on the economy, nationalisation and the EEC/EU) and too right-wing (on issues such as defence, Northern Ireland) for the left. It's a great pity that Shore never became Labour leader as I'm sure he would have proved a formidable adversary for Margaret Thatcher. He was a great public speaker and a man of great personal charm.

Perhaps if he had become leader we would never have had to endure New Labour.

Peter Shore: an Old Labour great. May he rest in peace

0 comments

You couldn’t make it up. You would have thought that after the disaster of railway privatisation the free market loons of The Adam Smith Institute, who came up with the whole barmy idea in the first place, would have done the honourable thing and left public life for good. But no, they’re still at it. The battiest think tank in the world wants to see the publicly-owned Glas Cymru- the company which owns Welsh Water subjected to the “disciplines of private sector ownership”. And we all know that that will mean: profits for the few, but much higher bills for householders.

In his brilliant post 'English Water, anyone', Charlie Marks writes:

Though Glas Cymru may not be perfect, it looks a damn sight better than what we have in England! We are being told that the only way to lower our bills is to have the profiteering water companies competing with each other. We have this with our gas and electricity suppliers - but do our bills come down? No, they compete with each other to squeeze as much money out of customers!

Privatisation has been a disaster. Public assets sold off at knock-down prices to the friends and sponsors of the governing party (Tories, now New Labour). Prices have been allowed to skyrocket -natural monopolies are milked for profit by colluding suppliers in gas, electricity, and railways. Rather than seeing greater private investment in our railways, more public money is invested in rail than ever before!

The likes of the Adam Smith Institute can try all they like to convince the public of the benefits of handing public resources over to big businesses. Their nonsense is only heeded by those politicians hoping to get cushy non-jobs in business after they leave office.

We need to return the privatised utilities to public ownership and democratic control, with the involvement of workers and consumers in the process of management.

Surveys of public opinion have never found a clear majority in favour of privatisation - and with the credit crunch being perceived as resulting deregulation and demutualisation, more and more people will begin to see the necessity of reversing the neoliberal era.

Privatisation of water and sewage services did not take place in Scotland or Northern Ireland. Scottish Water is owned by the Scottish government and both the incumbent nationalist party and the opposition Labour Party are committed to the company remaining in the public sector. The Scottish Tories are for privatisation, but are at pains to point out they don’t want what has happened in England! Northern Ireland Water priovides water and sewage services in the six counties; like Scottish Water it is still part of the public sector.

So, there’s Northern Ireland Water, Scottish Water, Welsh Water - how about English Water?

You can read Charlie’s article in full at the Campaign for Public Ownership’s website and at his own excellent pro-public ownership blog.

Meanwhile, I see that the Adam Smith Institute have got a new book coming out entitled 'Privatisation-Regaining the Momentum'. That's sure to be a best-seller this Christmas, isn't it?

0 comments

This piece of mine appears in The First Post

As the economics pundit Will Hutton put it, "It was only months ago that nationalisation seemed to belong to the world of big band music, ration coupons and nylons."

Now, of course, everything has changed.

The Government's acquisition of Northern Rock in February, and this week's £37bn purchase of sizeable public stakes in three of Britain's leading banks, means that the great nationalisation 'taboo', in force since the Thatcherite counter-revolution of 1979, is finally at an end. Even the Sunday Telegraph has been forced to acknowledge that "nationalisation is no longer a dirty word".

Now that the Rubicon has been crossed, the question that needs to be asked is: If the government can nationalise our banks, why can't they bring our malfunctioning railways, our profiteering utility companies and our widely condemned privately owned airports back into public ownership?

In the standard neo-liberal rewrite of Britain's post-war history, nationalisation is portrayed as an unmitigated disaster. Nationalised industries were - so the narrative goes - inefficient, badly run and a drain on the public purse.

But new quantitative research goes a long way to shattering this myth. It shows how productivity growth in publicly owned enterprises compared favourably to that in the private sector and in the US, where utilities remained in private ownership. And the profitability of the nationalised industries improved too, from decade to decade.

Advocates of privatisation claimed that the mass sell-off of Britain's public utilities, public transport and infrastructure would improve efficiency and benefit the consumer. In fact, the opposite occurred. Britain's railways are by far and away the most expensive in Europe, with fares up to 14 times higher than on the continent - despite the new train companies receiving four times more in taxpayers' subsidies than the state-owned British Rail.

It's a similar story with our privatised airports, which, with their tacky, shopping-mall atmosphere are widely regarded as an international disgrace. Those who hold to the dogmatic 'publicly-owned bad, privately-owned good' mantra should reflect that Manchester Airport, the one major British airport which remains in public ownership, regularly comes out top in surveys of customer satisfaction and was voted Britain's best regional airport last year.

As for Britain's energy utilities, with record price hikes in place and more on the way, is there anyone now prepared to argue that privatisation has benefited consumers?

As opposed to the arguments for privatisation, the case for re-nationalising the railways, utilities and airports is based not on ideology, but on common sense. Natural monopolies such as railways and utility companies are better in public ownership than in private hands where, because of the need to pay dividends to shareholders, prices paid by consumers will always be higher.

To see how different things could have been, we only have to look across the Channel. While Britain pursued an extremist path in the 1980s and 1990s by "selling off the family silver" - to use former Conservative Prime Minister Harold Macmillan's wonderfully damning phrase - our European neighbours preferred to take a more pragmatic approach.

No other major European country has yet followed the British example and sold off its railways. Even Switzerland, regarded by many as a bastion of the free market, has kept its railways in public ownership. And while British householders face record hikes in their energy bills this winter, the position is rather different on the continent where, due to greater state involvement, price rises are nowhere near as high.

The recent financial meltdown has done much to discredit the neo-liberal ideology that Britain has followed - under both Conservative and Labour governments - over the past 29 years. It's time to ditch that ideology and return to the common sense approach to public ownership that Britain followed after World War Two.

Our unhappy experience since 1979 shows that it's privatisation - and not nationalisation - which deserves to be regarded as a 'dirty word'.

0 comments

Chris Dillow, over at Stumbling and Mumbling, writes:

At risk of sounding like an ultra-leftist, the problem with the part-nationalization of the banks is that it doesn’t go far enough. It doesn’t address the flaw in the system that got us into this mess. Darling says:
We want to return these banks to the private sector because I don’t think governments can run banks in the long-run.
But the lesson of the last few weeks is that the private sector cannot run banks either, at least when its ownership comprises dispersed shareholders none of whom exercise adequate control over chief executives.
And Darling is doing little to change this. Granted, he’s attaching some strings to his deal, such as ensuring the supply of mortgage and small business lending at 2007 levels - which is absurd given that demand won’t be at 2007 levels.
But these strings don’t change the basic structure of the control of banks. Darling is promising to run RBS “at arm’s length” - which just replaces one form of passive ownership with another.

Chris is right (although I do disagree with his later assertion that 'everyone knows that centrally planned economies are a stinkingly bad idea'). The government’s measures don’t go far enough. But at least the Rubicon has been crossed. Nationalisation is back on the political agenda after twenty-nine years and it’s our job to make sure it stays there.

0 comments

The website European Tribune reports:

On Thursday, the partial privatization scheme for Deutsche Bahn by the German government was postponed and, according to German commentators, it is unlikely ever to get back on track. The privatization scheme was disrupted by the worldwide financial crisis. Deutsche Welle reports 'The German Government Postpones Deutsche Bahn Share Listing'. The German government has announced that it will postpone an initial listing of shares in the national railway Deutsche Bahn "for at least several weeks," a source close to the matter said on Thursday...
Turbulence on equity markets caused by the international financial crisis prompted the delay of the sale of a 24.9 percent stake, in what is set to be the last major privatisation in Europe's biggest economy.

Handelsblatt, the German business daily says:

The fact is, the already botched, partial privatization of the Deutsche Bahn received on Thursday ... it's death blow. And that's a good thing.

It most certainly is. As one of the Euro Tribune commenters writes:

"In my (often expressed) view, the privatisation of the German Railways is the longest-running, most crackpot and most dangerous project of neoliberals in Germany".

It beggars belief that the German government was even planning to copy the disastrous British example and privatise its excellent state-owned railway.

On the privatisation front, there's more good news from Serbia, where the planned privatisation of JAT has also fallen through. The airline is to stay in in public ownership.

The tide is turning, dear reader. Twenty-nine years of neoliberal dogma is coming to an end. It's public ownership- and not privatisation- which represents the future.

0 comments

According to the Sunday Telegraph, the government is preparing to take majority stakes in Britain's banks and put government appointees on the boards.
Well if I, or anyone else, had advocated such a measure earlier this year, we would have been denounced as a 'Stalinists' or 'hard-leftists'. Now we have the 'New Labour' government planning such measures- and the Conservative Party and Liberal Democrats supporting them. Funny old world, isn't it?

Meanwhile, former Cabinet Minister Peter Hain (above) is warning that the government must take "emergency steps" to prevent rail, water and power companies going bust in the global economic storm.

The Observer reports:
Hain, the former work and pensions secretary, urged the government to draw up reserve powers that could be used in the event of a major utility collapsing and taking vital services with it. His words follow jitters in the City about the damage a freeze in bank lending could do to some companies that have borrowed heavily to invest in infrastructure.

But while Hain wants a government bail-out of the companies concerned- he doesn't want public ownership.

He said it was 'moonshine' to think that the railways or private utilities could be re-nationalised but the government needed a contingency plan to re-capitalise critical services if necessary, just as it did last week by offering to buy shares in banks.

In other words, Peter Hain would like to see taxpayers money pumped into our railway and utility companies- without the taxpayer receving equity in those companies.

Billions of pounds of taxpayers money has already been handed over to Britain's railway companies since the disastrous privatisation of 1996. Hain seems to want even more taxpayer support. He claims that renationalisation is 'moonshine', but how come all the other countries in the EU- and indeed in the rest of the world- operate very well (and indeed much better than Britain) with publicly-owned railways?

Now that the Sunday Telegraph has informed us that nationalisation is no longer a 'dirty word' (not that it ever was in these parts), it's time to step up our efforts to get the railways and privately-owned utility companies renationalised. If the government can nationalise the banks, why on earth can't they bring back British Rail? Renationalisation is not 'moonshine', Mr Hain. It's plain common sense. And it's going to happen.

UPDATE:
Peter Hitchens writes:

If we have all these billions available to nationalise the banks, could we just possibly also find a few bob to do the equally urgent and necessary job of renationalising the railways? The Tories could use the opportunity to admit that privatising BR was one of the most bottomlessly stupid things they ever did.

Hear, hear!

0 comments

This column of mine appeared in Friday's Morning Star.

Anyone else out there remember British Rail's Sealink ferries? They had one problem: they were far too popular and were far too successful. And for a state-owned company in an era of rampant neoliberalism that would never do.


Sir Peter Parker, former head of British Rail, used to complain that being in charge of the state-run railway during the Thatcher years, meant being on a hiding to nothing. If British Rail made a loss, it was called an inefficient nationalised company. If it was making a profit, then it was surely it was time for it to be flogged off.

I was reminded of Sir Peter’s observations while travelling on a cross-channel ferry over the summer. In the 1970s and 80s the most popular cross-channel ferry operator in Britain was Sealink, a subsidiary of British Rail. Being part of British Rail meant that ferry departure times could be co-ordinated with train arrival times- and ‘through tickets’ could be bought from any British station. The problem with Sealink, from the Thatcherite’s perspective, was that it was simply too successful. Sealink earned a profit before interest and tax of £12.8 million for the year ending 31st December 1983( the year prior to its privatisation) compared to £2.9 million for the preceding year. Its return on assets was almost 10% and on turnover 5%- both highly creditable figures. Ludicrously, given how well Sealink was doing, the government claimed that they were privatising Sealink in order for the company to “benefit from the stimulus of private sector status and access to private capital“.

For Sealink, the "stimulus of private sector status" proved to be none too stimulating. The company was bought by Sea Containers, a Bermuda based, American owned company- which was then subject to a hostile takeover by the rival Swedish-owned Stena Line- and the Sealink name passed out of existence.

The sell-off of Sealink, together with the privatisation of the profitable British Rail Hotels in 1982- and British Rail Engineering- all paved the way for the eventual selling-off of British Rail itself in 1996.

Yet you won’t hear supporters of that privatisation mention the fact that Britain's "efficient" privatised railway system receives over four times more in taxpayers‘ subsidy than the much-maligned British Rail did.

*********************************************************
“Governments and civil servants can’t run businesses- that’s been proved a depressing times all over the world“ claims privatisation zealot Richard Branson in his new book “Business Stripped Bare”. I wonder if this is the same Richard Branson whose privately run (but of course, publicly subsidised),Virgin Trains are such a model of reliability and efficiency?

******************************************************************
I am a fairly optimistic person by nature, but if you had told me earlier this year when I co-founded the Campaign for Public Ownership, that George Bush's neo-conservative administration in the U.S. would be following the CPO's pro-nationalisation agenda, I really wouldn't have believed it. As Simon English, writing in The Evening Standard puts it, "Large chunks of Wall Street, supposedly the home of capitalism, are now under government control".

Of course, the moves by Bush- and similar ones by the British government to nationalise Northern Rock are more about keeping afloat the banking system rather than a sudden conversion to the cause of public ownership, but they still provide us with a great opportunity to promote the case for further nationalisation. If the government can nationalise Northern Rock, why can’t they renationalise the railways- and our profiteering energy companies?

2008 is the year when public ownership returned to the agenda.

It’s our job to make sure it stays there.

0 comments

"I never thought when I was a mere lad that I would live to see the Bennite vision of the nationalisation of the banks fulfilled, and with the full-throated support of the Tory party."

bemoans arch-Thatcherite Simon Heffer in today’s Daily Telegraph.

Well, ok- it's only part-nationalisation, but it is still wonderful news. I am a fairly optimistic person by nature, but if you had told me, when I co-founded the Campaign for Public Ownership earlier this year, that within a few months, the neoconservative administration in Washington would be embarking on the biggest nationalisation programme in America’s history- and that in Britain the 'New Labour' government would be part-nationalising Britain's eight biggest banks, I would have found it very hard to believe. But it’s happened.

2008 has been the year that the twenty-nine year nationalisation taboo has been well and truly broken. Now it‘s time for all of us who believe that extending public ownership should be a key element of economic policy, and not merely an ‘emergency measure’- to rescue failing enterprises- to make the case for the government to renationalise our rip-off utility companies, our airports, the railways and public transport. And of course to halt the creeping privatisation of the National Health Service.

The 1979 Thatcherite neo-liberal counter-revolution has run its course- destroyed by the very greed which it did so much to encourage. And in order for us to go forward again as an economy- and society- we need to turn the clock back to the collectivist days of 1945. Public Ownership is back on the political agenda, and Simon Heffer and his fellow Thatcherite ideologues are very unhappy little bunnies indeed, as their 'free market', greed-driven, turbo-capitalist world collapses before their very eyes.

It really is time to pop the champagne corks!

0 comments